1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an amusement device, toy or educational aid of the general type having several sheet material building components or units of common geometric shapes with mechanism for connecting the units substantially edge-to-edge in a two-dimensional or three-dimensional array.
2. Prior Art
Regular polygons are nature's building blocks in forming tesselations, polyhedra and packed polyhedra.
"Stick-and-connector" construction kits have been used to form space frameworks representing naturally occurring lattice structures and other geometrical forms, but it can be difficult for the novice to visualize the symmetrical pattern of these forms by viewing a stick-and-connector framework.
Zeischegg U.S. Pat. No. 3,659,360, issued May 2, 1972, Berry U.S. Pat. No. 2,839,841, issued June 24, 1958, and Billis U.S. Pat. No. 3,117,384, issued Jan. 14, 1964, disclose construction kits of another general type, namely, kits using three-dimensional blocks which are intended to be arranged with adjacent side faces of the blocks in substantially contiguous relationship. Such blocks also have been used to represent lattice structures of crystalline solids and other shapes and forms, but there are limitations on the number of possible arrangements so that such kits are not sufficiently versatile to be interesting and amusing over a long period.
Another general category of construction kits is illustrated by Rice et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,614,835, issued Oct. 26, 1971, and Cohen et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,726,027, issued Apr. 10, 1973. Kits of this category have planar sheet material components with mechanism for joining the components edge-to-edge. The present invention is an improved kit of this general category.